Cheers and tears as migrant survivors make it to Italy

PALERMO, Italy: More than 1,000 migrants sang hymns, danced and clapped as they sailed into Palermo on Monday, along with the corpses of 17 people who did not survive another series of tragedy-tainted rescues in the Mediterranean.

Starting with the sick, women and children, several hundred of the mainly African group were disembarked from the Siem Pilot, a Norwegian ship working for the European borders agency Frontex´s Operation Triton.

In scenes being played out at a number of Italian ports after a busy weekend in waters off Libya, the rest were to stay on board overnight to ease the pressure on pier-side staff processing the new arrivals.

Among those arriving in Sicily were survivors of an incident on Friday morning when a rubber dinghy was attacked by men in a Libyan coastguard speedboat.

The attack, aimed at stealing or reclaiming the outboard engine of the dinghy, resulted in most of the passengers jumping into the water and the dinghy partially deflating. An unknown number, possibly as many as 25, drowned.

In a separate incident at least 10 people including four children drowned on Saturday morning during a rescue by the Doctors without Borders (MSF) charity´s boat, Dignity One.

Alhaji Kutubu Sankoh, from Sierra Leone, said the dinghy he had been travelling on had also had its engine taken off it by unknown assailants.

"We don´t know who has taken our machine. So we are on the water, everybody is crying, we just thought everything is over for us, but with God´s grace your people rescued us," he told AFP.

Sankoh, 20, said he had left his home and begun the perilous journey over land and sea to Europe after his father died of Ebola.

"People stigmatise us so much, our family," he said while admitting that he would not advise anyone else to make the same journey.

"I wouldn´t allow any of my family to use this road to be honest. It´s not easy, it´s very tough."

An MSF psychological team waited on land to provide counselling for the survivors from the most traumatic incidents at sea. "Their stories give us nightmares," the charity said in a Tweet.

Exhaustion and hunger were the most pressing concerns for most on the Siem Pilot.

Despite the fatigue, they were still able to raise a great cheer when informed by the crew that they were within an hour of the Sicilian port.